Some Observations on Pace

I was excited to see that David Appelman added Pace to the stats pages based on don’t_bring_in_the_lefty‘s post at BtBS. It was something I had thought about before when Carson emailed me about including it in NERD. Nothing came of it, but I had the code lying around on my computer and I thought this would be good opportunity to share some of my observations.

First off, I calculate pace a little differently. I don’t have pick-off attempts in my database, so my time between pitches will be higher than David’s. For example, if a four-pitch at-bat includes one pick-off attempt and takes a total of 60 seconds, I would get an average of 60/3 = 20 seconds, while David gets 60/4 = 15 seconds. On average David gets 21.5 seconds between pitches while I get 22.5. I think our different formulas might also be why David gets different numbers than those posted at BtBS.

Beyond pace numbers for each pitcher, I wanted to see how count and other game states (situation) affect pace. Here is the time, in seconds, between the pervious pitch and the pitch at each count sorted by time:

1-0

19.2

3-0

19.4

0-1

20.4

3-1

21.2

2-0

21.3

1-1

21.5

2-1

22.0

1-2

25.3

0-2

25.5

2-2

25.8

3-2

26.1

Two-strike counts slow down the game — adding over three seconds per pitch. The reason might have more to do with the batter; he is more likely to step out of the box when he is closer to a strikeout. But the implication might mean strikeout pitchers will have a slower pace just because they spend more time in two-strike counts, which explains, to some extent, why pitch-to-contact guys like Mike Leake and Mark Buehrle have the fastest pace.

Next I wanted to look at how game state affects pace. A commenter to David’s post suggested looking at it by Leverage Index. Unfortunately I don’t have those numbers in my database — as a proxy I used runners on instead. Not surprisingly, the game slows down drastically with runners on (27.3 seconds between pitches when at least one runner is on, versus 19.9 without). A big part of this is because I am counting time for throws over to first in the time between pitches.

Another thing that will slow down a game, although only slightly, is when a reliever comes in. On average they are two seconds slower between pitches (23.8 for relievers versus 21.8 for starters). Relievers strikeout more batters than starters so part of this is the extra two-strike counts at which relievers will arrive. But even looking at just two-strike counts, relievers take longer (27.1 seconds versus 24.9 seconds). Don’t_bring_in_the_lefty‘s list at BtBS was almost all relievers and it looks like this is a general trend.